I’ll briefly interrupt my ongoing romp through the 1520s here to give a brief report on what I did in the morning yesterday, just a couple hours before the MAGA mobs marched into the U.S. Capitol. Our Quaker meeting had been in touch in recent weeks with the pastors at the four churches that the … Continue reading A key development of 2021
Some quick takeaways from this past week’s election news here in the USA. 1. Though Biden won, it’s still true that more than 70 million Americans cast a vote for Donald Trump. That, after four years of seeing him in action: racism, misogyny, crass cutting of health care and other vital social programs; “White” entitled-ism, … Continue reading Takeaways from an election
Sometimes, you find a book. And sometimes, when you are ready for it, a book finds you. Such has been my experience this past week with Sven Lindqvist’s slim 1992/96 volume “Exterminate All the Brutes”: One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide. In recent weeks, as alert readers … Continue reading To Zinder
I’ve been researching and thinking a lot about the forms of settler colonialism unleashed and maintained by “White” European nations– mainly, my own people-of-birth, the British– against people of color in many parts of the world. At times, doing this research– reading these accounts, seeing and trying to understand these pictures– makes me deeply, deeply … Continue reading The British genocides against Australian First Nations
Last week, I had the pleasure of conversing with Amb. Chas W. Freeman, Jr, on the “World After Covid” webinar series that Just World Educational has been running. Freeman, you may remember, was the man notably removed from consideration as Barack Obama’s first Director of National Intelligence because the pro-Israel lobby wanted to ensure that … Continue reading “White” European domination of the world screeches to an end
Today, an Air Algerie plane conveyed to the Houari Boumedienne International Airport in Algiers the mortal remains of Sheikh Ahmed Bouziane, commander of a native-Algerian force overpowered by the invading French in Zaatcha, Algeria, in November 1849, and 23 other members of the defeated Algerian defense force. According to this account by Madjid Zerrouky in … Continue reading The unbearable legacies of settler colonialism
The sustained outpouring of #BlackLivesMatter and related pro-justice activism right across the United States has been pushing important– and in most cases, long-overdue– change at many levels. One level is that of “high-end corporate media”, where just in the past week I have read three very moving essays by Black-American writers who have seemingly felt … Continue reading Powerful new testimonies from Black American veterans of the corporate media
A few weeks ago, my colleague on the board of Just World Educational Richard Falk and I launched a new initiative, an exploration of the ways the current “Covid era” has been upending the global balance balance. You can read more about our “World After Covid” project, here. It’s been intellectually engaging to get this … Continue reading Bill Fletcher, W.E.B. Dubois, and the World Today
Twenty months ago, Bill the spouse and I moved back to live in Washington DC fulltime after living in “bucolic” Charlottesville, VA for 21 years. Three months ago, the Covid-19 crisis found us here; and since then I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how starkly the three braided strands of this crisis expose … Continue reading Notes from the heart of this collapsing empire
